Officer and Gentleman
GIACOMO CASANOVA, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur; Doctor of Divinity in the University of Padua, priest and confidant of Car- dinals; Ensign in the Army of the Venetian Re- public, pride of the Mess, scourge of the faro table:, poet, gaol-breaker, dandy, wit; Casanova, Prince of Amorists and Man of Destiny—what has he been to us these many years but a tired music hall joke? If, however, we are prepared to believe one word in a hundred of this first volume of his Memoirs, then clearly Casanova will have to be rehabilitated. No doubt he was capable of passing off attractive minor fictions as fact; but Arthur Symons and others think him to have been truthful in essentials, and if we accept this then we must deliver judgment as follows.
Casanova was an adventurer in the broadest sense: that is to say, he was not merely concerned with money and women (devoted as he was to both), but he was also possessed of the curiosity. courage and resource to seek out strange places and strange things, survive among them, examine them and relish them. He was assisted in such .xploits by generosity, charm, a philosophic dis- position, Venetian cunning, and, of course, his inexhaustible sexual powers. But basically—and this is the real point—Casanova was an honour- able man. In the last resort, he survives everything, and can be forgiven everything, because of his unassailable integrity. He was a gambler, but un- like everyone else at that time he did not cheat. lie was generally a dependant, but he did not fawn. He was a crook, but only a 'Raffles' sort of crook. He was a lecher, but he did his best to keep out of circulation when suffering from `the wounds of Love.' He would knock you flat as soon as look at you, but he would let you get up before hitting you again. Casanova—dare one say it?—was a gentleman. And he was a writer. He writes with energy, pace and nerve. These Memoirs were composed when he was a feeble and toothless old man, but
• they were written as though he had that minute returned to his lodgings to set down fresh the doings of the day. It is as though, when he wrote, he had come that instant from the Pope, or was but newly risen from the bed of the two beautiful 'sisters (one became a Countess, the other a Nun), or was that very night to take ship for Constan- tinople—where he only just failed in the trickiest .of all enterprises, the cuckolding of a Turk. So three times three for Giacomo Casanova, lover, priest, and gambler, officer and artist, Chevalier de Seingalt, Knight of the Golden Spur.
SIMON RAVEN
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